Thank you so much for your feedback! I know I'm a little late to respond and thank you for everything...I wanted to take the time to read through a bunch of the other log lines and your responses to them and really reconsider mine, as well.
I've thought a lot about the title, and to your point, making it longer so that it tells more about the book. For now I've landed on:
Atomic: A Gen X Memoir of Fractured Family and Altered States
The logline options could then be:
1. Hollywood Park meets Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls
2. As a small child, Robin is abandoned to a verbally abusive stepmother and creates her own headspace to make the external world seem awesome while she waits for her daredevil dad to come home from Air Force nuke ALERT. This headspace works until it suddenly throws her in danger, and she must find other ways to cope and eventually connect to her dad.
3. As a young child abandoned in a peculiar divorce, Robin creates her own perception shift to make the world feel beautiful, setting off an exploration of altered states that eventually lands her right next to her dad and the connection with him she has
tried and failed to achieve until then. / craved all along.
I feel like the tricky part is I have to explain some of the headspace stuff (because it's not "normal") which then takes up a bunch of real estate. (Also I can't just say "after divorce" because it has to be quantified that I was the child, not some married person, so that also takes up space.) Do these options seem clearer to you? This is so hard! A lot of my book is actually quite funny and reads like a novel (according to other readers/writers), but I don't know how to write the log line in a funny way. (Or if I should.) Hmm. I think I might be like you where other people see better how to encapsulate it.
In any case I feel more comfortable with it and like it's moving forward in a good way.
Hi Courtney! I love this idea. I need major help because my romcom is fairly plot-heavy, and I'm not sure how to distill it into a logline that's not 60 words!
TITLE/GENRE: The 27 Club / Women's fiction/romcom
SUMMARY: Greta Hopper avoids everything that could possibly kill her: she doesn’t eat peanuts in case of an undiagnosed nut allergy; she’ll walk to her destination instead of subway for fear of a freak derailment. She knows it’s all in her head, even if the panic attacks show up everywhere else: her racing heart, her shaking hands. But when her family history and the onset of migraines give her real reason to worry, suddenly avoidance tactics and compartmentalizing aren’t enough. She needs health insurance for the exam that could potentially save her life…or prove that this is just another irrational fear.
Greta finds it at Schwartz’s, a struggling Jewish deli on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, which guarantees her health insurance if she can stick it out for 90 days, first. But when the cantankerous owner considers selling the deli before her probation is up, the exam–and her peace of mind–are once again in jeopardy. To save the deli, she teams up with Eli Galinski, the former frontman of a now-forgotten indie rock band, Schwartz’s bagel maker-in-chief, and Greta’s polar opposite.
They spend the summer rolling bagels, boosting profits, and falling madly, stupidly in love. But when Eli gets another shot at music relevance that means leaving the deli behind, Greta will be forced to question if, like her illness, their love is real, or all in her head.
LOGLINE: To overcome her existential dread, a woman must preserve the legacy of a crumbling Jewish deli alongside a musician working to rebuild his own.
XY: It's Everyone in this Room will Someday be Dead meets Book Lovers.
OR It's if Emily Henry wrote a Phoebe Bridgers album.
Amasa Sprague is the name of the wealthy mill owner who was murdered. I’m not married to the idea of calling the novel Amasa, it’s just such an unusual name that it sticks with me. As of right now, it’s a multi-narrator. Tone-wise I am aiming for something like the Crimson Petal and the White by Michael Faber. Ambitious, I know. I want it to be gritty, and even a bit snarky, but ultimately relatable. The main character is Nicholas Gordon, poor Irish immigrant, who spent eight years building a life here before sending for his mother and siblings to join him in Rhode Island. His younger brother John was arrested only six months after arriving and was ultimately hung for the murder. The story opens with Nicholas at the local Tavern, where he gets into a spat with the owner of the tavern. This thread of conflict will ultimately be the reason that his family is fingered for the crime. Other characters include his long-suffering mother, his young, beautiful sister, who has an affair with Amasa, and his younger brother John, who is essentially the Fredo of their family. There is a prostitute who is in love with Nicholas, and who Nicholas loves in return, but has turned his back on because she betrayed him a few years prior. There is also Amasa’s wife, who is an incredibly ambitious and overburdened woman who is wrestling with the challenge of getting her children excepted into gentrified society (the Sprague family are “new” money) She is having an affair with Amasa’s brother. The last important character (as I’m writing this I’m thinking maybe this is too many to keep track of) are the slaves that Amasa has inherited and who were legally emancipated the year before his murder, but stayed on because they had nowhere to go.
I’ve wrestled with all of these things, and have written most of this book over and over and over again to try out the different voices. I started by attempting to set it up as a compilation of testimonies, kind of like a documentary film, where each character has the opportunity to give their testimony from the perspective of hindsight while adding another brick to the building of the story, but then it seemed that all of those first person narrations would be too hard to keep track of. As of now I have an omniscient narrator who jumps from scene to scene, but who is telling the story from Nicholas Gordon‘s perspective.
Hi Courtney, love your substack and am in the process of reading your memoir, Year of the Horses which I also love ! I know I'm late to the party but didn't get to read this until now. Hope you can take a look- whatever you do, I'm grateful.
TITLE/ GENRE: The Healing Houses/ upmarket
Artist Elaine has been ten years a recluse after her destructive obsession with the leader of a cult when she was just seventeen. Making a living with her art is not just her dream but a financial necessity. Her goal is within reach when she gets a call from her ex-boyfriend, unearthing buried memories of their years in the cult, both troubling and poignant. Intrigued with the possibility of rekindling their love cut short, she lets her guard down and accepts an invitation to a concert where she comes face to face with the cult leader jeopardizing everything: the secret of her whereabouts, her budding life as an artist, and her mental health.
Needing to focus on her upcoming solo exhibit at a prestigious gallery, Elaine turns to the spiritual wisdom she learned in the beginning days of the cult. But when the leader’s powerful words appear in her artwork of simple, metaphorical houses, her darkest past surfaces, one her gallery owner wants to expose. Her ex-boyfriend becomes crucial in uncovering a long-ago mystery about the cult and its leader. As they turn up alarming details, it raises the question for Elaine: how much is she willing to uncover about the man she thought she’d once loved?
LOGLINE: When a reclusive artist is finally getting her life back together after a traumatic cult experience, she finds herself face to face with the cult’s charismatic leader and sets out to eliminate, with the help of her paintings, a ten-year-long obsession with him, uncovering more than she wishes to know in the process.
Hi Courtney! I am a new subscriber, and I also loved (LOVED!) Before and After the Book Deal, which had me both rolling with laughter and soberly taking notes. I know I'm late to this game, so while I'd be super thankful for your thoughts on my logline, no pressure to do so. Thank you for being you.
TITLE/GENRE: Finding Petronella / Memoir
DESCRIPTION: When Jenny O’Connell met 89-year-old Sylvia Antoinette Petronella van der Moer on her deathbed in the spring of 2013, van der Moer began the conversation with four words: “I walked to Lapland.”
In 1949, the adventurous Dutch woman—known in Finland as “Petronella”—had followed her dream of being a writer to postwar Helsinki, where she interviewed prominent hotshots of Finnish society until she ran out of money, ditched her hotel bills, and fled north to Lapland to escape arrest. There, she hiked 116 kilometers into the Lemmenjoki gold fields, where she joined the gold rush and lived in wilderness with a reclusive, ragtag group of gold prospectors until the secret police discovered her three months later. She was arrested, put on trial, and deported—and then she mysteriously disappeared, leaving a legend growing in her wake. Over time, Petronella became a Lappish folk hero: the subject of multiple books and a musical; the name of a street, a restaurant, a song. Two hills in Lemmenjoki are named after her breasts. More than 70 years later, she continues to be a figure of great mystery and renown.
Captivated by those first words and the intrigue of Petronella’s legend, 26-year-old O’Connell—whose life had recently been upended by a near-death experience—quit her job as a naturalist and outdoor guide to follow Petronella’s footsteps across the Arctic Circle, embarking on a journey of self-discovery to interrogate the fears she’d inherited from society, face her own mortality, and prove—to herself, most of all—that she belonged in the wild places that brought her alive.
Big-hearted, whimsical, funny, and intensely-written, Finding Petronella provides sharp inquiry into what it is to be a woman making her way in the male-dominated world of outdoor adventure, reveals the trials and rewards of impulsive choices, and tells rich secrets about what it means to be alive and searching. O’Connell is guided on her quest by the modern-day Lemmenjoki gold prospectors—a lively and reclusive cast of characters who answer the call of the wilderness each year; and Arctic Lapland itself—a rare landscape, threatened by climate change, that is as harsh as it is stunning.
LOGLINE: Finding Petronella is a big-hearted memoir of a young woman who, inspired by a neighbor’s dying words, embarks on a journey across Finland’s Arctic Circle to interrogate inherited fear, carve out a place for herself as a woman in the wilderness, and chase that which brings her alive.
X meets Y: A page-turning travel epic that weaves adventure writing, memoir, and cultural journalism into a big-hearted account of self-discovery and transformation, Finding Petronella sits at the confluence of Robyn Davidson’s Tracks, Cheryl Strayed's Wild, and Blair Braverman’s Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube.
Hi Courtney - I'm a new subscriber, happy to be here! Hopefully it's not too late to participate.
TITLE/GENRE: Toward the Light: A Year in Paris / Memoir
DESCRIPTION: TOWARD THE LIGHT: A YEAR IN PARIS tells the story of a recent college graduate who boards a plane for a year-long adventure in Paris, hoping to improve her French while nannying. Two months after her arrival a stranger sexually assaults her after a run in a park. Isolated and alone in a foreign country in the early 1990s--before cell phones and email--but unwilling to let rape deter her, she chooses to stay in France and begin again, seeking healing and transforming herself in the process. The book takes place over the course of one year in Paris, and focuses on an essential, often-overlooked question, “How does healing begin?” The initial journey inward is often neglected in a quest for justice or a desire to push past the trauma as quickly as possible; yet, it is the essential foundation for true healing. The book has a spiritual component to it, as the narrator grapples with profound questions of faith. The narrator offers insight and perspective on her experience of trauma and the beginnings of recovery with a depth of understanding that her twentysomething self did not and could not have had.
LOGLINE: A recent college graduate sets off on a year-long adventure in Paris, nannying for a French family. Two months after her arrival, she is plunged into darkness when a stranger sexually assaults her. Isolated and alone in a foreign country in the early 1990s, she chooses to stay in France and begin again, seeking healing and transforming herself in the process.
Hi Courtney & everyone diving in. Here is mine, if it is not too late to participate.
TITLE/GENRE: My Bread Panics/Narrative nonfiction
DESCRIPTION: Doubts about bread seem modern but as the staple food of American life, bread has been the steady object of social concern. Loaf by loaf, crumb by crumb, bread carries nutrition and status, and the lack of these virtues, too. Nineteenth century reformers focused on homemade whole wheat bread as a key to dietary and spiritual health, and as bread industrialized, the emerging industry saw women who baked at home as their prime competition. Who should make our daily bread, and what it should contain is a constant question, one that the sourdough and bread baking craze of the early pandemic brought into kitchens and minds. I invite readers to explore their lingering questions as I interrogate this emblem of love and community care. I quiz bread from flour to bakery, addressing concerns about its nutritional soundness, and the emotions and labor conditions wrapped up in its production.
LOGLINE: Written with the urgency and intimacy of Lisa Donovan's "Our Lady of Perpetual Hunger", this coming of age in food is a cross between the revelations of Tracie McMillan's "The American Way of Eating" and the cultural explorations of Aaron Bobrow-Strain’s "White Bread."
Oh thank you so much. What a boost to my confidence, and I can't wait to read your next novel. I'm crossing fingers one lovely agent agrees with your assessment of this story!
DESCRIPTION: Glenda Glenn never planned to become a vigilante gardener. But when a neighbor’s construction threatens her homegrown nature preserve, she’s forced into action. Like a shadowy Johnny Appleseed, she smuggles native plants across property lines, sabotages exotics, reroutes rainwater, and takes charge of the local wildlife. But conflict is in the forecast.
LOGLINE: Set in a tony east coast suburb, Invasive Species is a comic novel about a woman so troubled by a changing world that she sneaks into neighbors’ yards to climate-proof them, guerilla-style.
TITLE: The In-Between Times: Twenty Weird and Wonderful Experiments to Break-Up with Do-It-All-ism & Fully Embrace the Lovely Life Hidden in the Cracks of Your Days
(yes this title is probably too long... haha!)
Project description:
Each chapter in the book is a description of 20 experiments I've done during the in-between times of my life (driving down the highway, at the grocery store, waiting for a staff meeting to get started, etc.) in an attempt to unhook from perfectionist, toxic-productivity mindsets, and uncover more delight, awe, love, ease and yesss! (my D.A.L.E.Y. 5) in the in-between times of my life.
Logline:
This is a book for moms of school-aged kids (or just women?) who are ready to unhook from all-or-nothing, toxic-productivity mindsets through a series of playful experiments that uncover the delight, awe, love, ease and yesss! available to all of us in the in-between times of life.
TITLE/GENRE: THE RELUCTANT WINE DETECTIVE (Mystery / Thriller)
DESCRIPTION: Eugenia Clairvin, an unassuming wine phenom, with a perfect olfactory memory, doesn't recognize her unique talent. She's overwhelmed by her mother's suicide, her father's illness, and the loss of the family vineyard. But things are looking up, fate has taken an unexpected turn and brought her a whirlwind romance and a new fiancé who is a wine researcher in France. When he vanishes and she suddenly receives a cryptic letter bearing an enigmatic scent from him, she goes to France, and with her fiancé's sister, discovers he disappeared with a rare wine that will change humanity forever. To unravel his fate and decipher the truth behind a deadly web of deceit, she must first recognize the truth about herself.
LOGLINE: An unassuming wine phenom with a perfect olfactory memory, searching for her missing fiancé, uncovers a miracle wine, a web of deadly deceit, and the truth about herself.
X MEETS Y: The Queen's Gambit and Lessons in Chemistry meet Dan Brown in the world of wine.
Dec 4, 2023·edited Dec 4, 2023Liked by Courtney Maum
Hi Courtney - I hope it's not too late to participate, I see you're responding to folks now! I just subscribed because I've been avoiding this challenge - thanks for prompting me to do it, and thanks in advance for your feedback!
Title: INDELICATE
Genre: Literary fiction
Description: The Junction Hotel is already on shaky ground when it’s overcome with a heat wave so powerful it threatens business and causes monstrous scorpions to infest its prized pool. Pablo, the pool attendant, is tasked with removing them, but he’s a nature-loving vegan opposed to violence of any sort. When Pablo accidentally offends an influential guest, the fate of the hotel is put at stake. Meanwhile, a journalist is arriving any minute to interview one of the hotel’s residents, a reclusive artist grappling with his first taste of fame during a creative dry spell, and put the hotel under even more scrutiny. After the hotel owner is injured and an unexpected, unwelcome guest arrives, the residents must band together under the leadership of the long-time hotel housekeeper to save the hotel.
Logline: The residents of a West Texas hotel are shaken by an unprecedented heat wave and an unexpected visitor.
XY formula: Grand Budapest Hotel, but in West Texas.
TITLE/GENRE: GROWING UP EVANGELICAL, CHINESE, AND DEPRESSED (memoir)
DESCRIPTION: The memoir tells the story of Jane, the daughter of Chinese immigrant and evangelical—almost fundamentalist—Christian parents, growing up in the 1980s and 90s in Orange County, California. She struggles with her father’s bipolar disorder as well as her own developing depression and anxiety. As Jane moves through romantic/sexual relationships, earning her PhD in English, and becoming a professor, she risks losing family and religion as she fights for her own independent identity and path.
LOGLINE: A Chinese American woman raised evangelical Christian wrestles with growing up with an immigrant father with bipolar disorder in order to pursue her own healing from depression and anxiety.
X MEETS Y: Educated meets The Collected Schizophrenias
TITLE/GENRE: MR. SCHEHERAZADE — romantic comedy (screenplay)
DESCRIPTION: Paul Falconer, a middle-aged novelist, has lost touch with his readership and the world around him. He misses the old publishing world, the old Manhattan, the old literary lions. When Paul learns that his long-time publisher might cancel his book deal, he feels almost relieved. But when Paul discovers that Mary, his editor and first reader — also, his ex-wife — is romantically serious with a mysterious someone, the author wants to win her back. And how better than to write something new? He will show Mary that he can still enchant her. But, as Paul gets underway, a minor character takes narrative control. Struggling to write his novel, Paul wonders who is creating whom?
LOGLINE: An out-of-touch novelist tries to win back his ex-wife with a new book, but a minor character has other ideas.
TAGLINE: Beneath every Pygmalion lies a Frankenstein.
X MEETS Y: “My Fair Lady” meets “Frankenstein” with “His Girl Friday” as the framing device. Or, because there will be a lot of tug-of-war with POV - “If Christopher Nolan and Nora Ephron had a love child, it might be this romantic comedy.”
[Title/Genre] A LEAVE OF ABSENCE (Book Club/Upmarket Fiction)
[Description] Set in the glory days of 2013 Silicon Valley, A LEAVE OF ABSENCE follows an ambitious millennial woman named Maggie, a rising-star journalist. After her ultra-successful father jumps off the Golden Gate Bridge, Maggie and her mother are unexpectedly left penniless. She joins a promising early-stage startup in San Francisco, hoping for a quick path back to riches, and falls for its charismatic founder, spiraling her life into a wildly unexpected direction that forces her to reckon with both her sanity and the world she's always felt she was destined to inhabit.
[Logline] It’s like Fleishman is in Trouble if Rachel Fleishman had undiagnosed bipolar disorder and worked at a hot startup in 2013 Silicon Valley
[XYZ]: Fleishman is Trouble meets Uncanny Valley meets Sorrow and Bliss (although, note; the novel also deals with postpartum psychosis, so I’m not sure whether a novel of that ilk—like The Upstairs House or Nightbitch would be better here?)
Hi Courtney!
Thank you so much for your feedback! I know I'm a little late to respond and thank you for everything...I wanted to take the time to read through a bunch of the other log lines and your responses to them and really reconsider mine, as well.
I've thought a lot about the title, and to your point, making it longer so that it tells more about the book. For now I've landed on:
Atomic: A Gen X Memoir of Fractured Family and Altered States
The logline options could then be:
1. Hollywood Park meets Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls
2. As a small child, Robin is abandoned to a verbally abusive stepmother and creates her own headspace to make the external world seem awesome while she waits for her daredevil dad to come home from Air Force nuke ALERT. This headspace works until it suddenly throws her in danger, and she must find other ways to cope and eventually connect to her dad.
3. As a young child abandoned in a peculiar divorce, Robin creates her own perception shift to make the world feel beautiful, setting off an exploration of altered states that eventually lands her right next to her dad and the connection with him she has
tried and failed to achieve until then. / craved all along.
I feel like the tricky part is I have to explain some of the headspace stuff (because it's not "normal") which then takes up a bunch of real estate. (Also I can't just say "after divorce" because it has to be quantified that I was the child, not some married person, so that also takes up space.) Do these options seem clearer to you? This is so hard! A lot of my book is actually quite funny and reads like a novel (according to other readers/writers), but I don't know how to write the log line in a funny way. (Or if I should.) Hmm. I think I might be like you where other people see better how to encapsulate it.
In any case I feel more comfortable with it and like it's moving forward in a good way.
Thanks a million!!
Robin
Hi Courtney! I love this idea. I need major help because my romcom is fairly plot-heavy, and I'm not sure how to distill it into a logline that's not 60 words!
TITLE/GENRE: The 27 Club / Women's fiction/romcom
SUMMARY: Greta Hopper avoids everything that could possibly kill her: she doesn’t eat peanuts in case of an undiagnosed nut allergy; she’ll walk to her destination instead of subway for fear of a freak derailment. She knows it’s all in her head, even if the panic attacks show up everywhere else: her racing heart, her shaking hands. But when her family history and the onset of migraines give her real reason to worry, suddenly avoidance tactics and compartmentalizing aren’t enough. She needs health insurance for the exam that could potentially save her life…or prove that this is just another irrational fear.
Greta finds it at Schwartz’s, a struggling Jewish deli on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, which guarantees her health insurance if she can stick it out for 90 days, first. But when the cantankerous owner considers selling the deli before her probation is up, the exam–and her peace of mind–are once again in jeopardy. To save the deli, she teams up with Eli Galinski, the former frontman of a now-forgotten indie rock band, Schwartz’s bagel maker-in-chief, and Greta’s polar opposite.
They spend the summer rolling bagels, boosting profits, and falling madly, stupidly in love. But when Eli gets another shot at music relevance that means leaving the deli behind, Greta will be forced to question if, like her illness, their love is real, or all in her head.
LOGLINE: To overcome her existential dread, a woman must preserve the legacy of a crumbling Jewish deli alongside a musician working to rebuild his own.
XY: It's Everyone in this Room will Someday be Dead meets Book Lovers.
OR It's if Emily Henry wrote a Phoebe Bridgers album.
:)
So sorry for the delay! Thanks for writing back!
Amasa Sprague is the name of the wealthy mill owner who was murdered. I’m not married to the idea of calling the novel Amasa, it’s just such an unusual name that it sticks with me. As of right now, it’s a multi-narrator. Tone-wise I am aiming for something like the Crimson Petal and the White by Michael Faber. Ambitious, I know. I want it to be gritty, and even a bit snarky, but ultimately relatable. The main character is Nicholas Gordon, poor Irish immigrant, who spent eight years building a life here before sending for his mother and siblings to join him in Rhode Island. His younger brother John was arrested only six months after arriving and was ultimately hung for the murder. The story opens with Nicholas at the local Tavern, where he gets into a spat with the owner of the tavern. This thread of conflict will ultimately be the reason that his family is fingered for the crime. Other characters include his long-suffering mother, his young, beautiful sister, who has an affair with Amasa, and his younger brother John, who is essentially the Fredo of their family. There is a prostitute who is in love with Nicholas, and who Nicholas loves in return, but has turned his back on because she betrayed him a few years prior. There is also Amasa’s wife, who is an incredibly ambitious and overburdened woman who is wrestling with the challenge of getting her children excepted into gentrified society (the Sprague family are “new” money) She is having an affair with Amasa’s brother. The last important character (as I’m writing this I’m thinking maybe this is too many to keep track of) are the slaves that Amasa has inherited and who were legally emancipated the year before his murder, but stayed on because they had nowhere to go.
I’ve wrestled with all of these things, and have written most of this book over and over and over again to try out the different voices. I started by attempting to set it up as a compilation of testimonies, kind of like a documentary film, where each character has the opportunity to give their testimony from the perspective of hindsight while adding another brick to the building of the story, but then it seemed that all of those first person narrations would be too hard to keep track of. As of now I have an omniscient narrator who jumps from scene to scene, but who is telling the story from Nicholas Gordon‘s perspective.
Thanks so much, you’re amazing!
Hi Courtney, love your substack and am in the process of reading your memoir, Year of the Horses which I also love ! I know I'm late to the party but didn't get to read this until now. Hope you can take a look- whatever you do, I'm grateful.
TITLE/ GENRE: The Healing Houses/ upmarket
Artist Elaine has been ten years a recluse after her destructive obsession with the leader of a cult when she was just seventeen. Making a living with her art is not just her dream but a financial necessity. Her goal is within reach when she gets a call from her ex-boyfriend, unearthing buried memories of their years in the cult, both troubling and poignant. Intrigued with the possibility of rekindling their love cut short, she lets her guard down and accepts an invitation to a concert where she comes face to face with the cult leader jeopardizing everything: the secret of her whereabouts, her budding life as an artist, and her mental health.
Needing to focus on her upcoming solo exhibit at a prestigious gallery, Elaine turns to the spiritual wisdom she learned in the beginning days of the cult. But when the leader’s powerful words appear in her artwork of simple, metaphorical houses, her darkest past surfaces, one her gallery owner wants to expose. Her ex-boyfriend becomes crucial in uncovering a long-ago mystery about the cult and its leader. As they turn up alarming details, it raises the question for Elaine: how much is she willing to uncover about the man she thought she’d once loved?
LOGLINE: When a reclusive artist is finally getting her life back together after a traumatic cult experience, she finds herself face to face with the cult’s charismatic leader and sets out to eliminate, with the help of her paintings, a ten-year-long obsession with him, uncovering more than she wishes to know in the process.
Hi Courtney! I am a new subscriber, and I also loved (LOVED!) Before and After the Book Deal, which had me both rolling with laughter and soberly taking notes. I know I'm late to this game, so while I'd be super thankful for your thoughts on my logline, no pressure to do so. Thank you for being you.
TITLE/GENRE: Finding Petronella / Memoir
DESCRIPTION: When Jenny O’Connell met 89-year-old Sylvia Antoinette Petronella van der Moer on her deathbed in the spring of 2013, van der Moer began the conversation with four words: “I walked to Lapland.”
In 1949, the adventurous Dutch woman—known in Finland as “Petronella”—had followed her dream of being a writer to postwar Helsinki, where she interviewed prominent hotshots of Finnish society until she ran out of money, ditched her hotel bills, and fled north to Lapland to escape arrest. There, she hiked 116 kilometers into the Lemmenjoki gold fields, where she joined the gold rush and lived in wilderness with a reclusive, ragtag group of gold prospectors until the secret police discovered her three months later. She was arrested, put on trial, and deported—and then she mysteriously disappeared, leaving a legend growing in her wake. Over time, Petronella became a Lappish folk hero: the subject of multiple books and a musical; the name of a street, a restaurant, a song. Two hills in Lemmenjoki are named after her breasts. More than 70 years later, she continues to be a figure of great mystery and renown.
Captivated by those first words and the intrigue of Petronella’s legend, 26-year-old O’Connell—whose life had recently been upended by a near-death experience—quit her job as a naturalist and outdoor guide to follow Petronella’s footsteps across the Arctic Circle, embarking on a journey of self-discovery to interrogate the fears she’d inherited from society, face her own mortality, and prove—to herself, most of all—that she belonged in the wild places that brought her alive.
Big-hearted, whimsical, funny, and intensely-written, Finding Petronella provides sharp inquiry into what it is to be a woman making her way in the male-dominated world of outdoor adventure, reveals the trials and rewards of impulsive choices, and tells rich secrets about what it means to be alive and searching. O’Connell is guided on her quest by the modern-day Lemmenjoki gold prospectors—a lively and reclusive cast of characters who answer the call of the wilderness each year; and Arctic Lapland itself—a rare landscape, threatened by climate change, that is as harsh as it is stunning.
LOGLINE: Finding Petronella is a big-hearted memoir of a young woman who, inspired by a neighbor’s dying words, embarks on a journey across Finland’s Arctic Circle to interrogate inherited fear, carve out a place for herself as a woman in the wilderness, and chase that which brings her alive.
X meets Y: A page-turning travel epic that weaves adventure writing, memoir, and cultural journalism into a big-hearted account of self-discovery and transformation, Finding Petronella sits at the confluence of Robyn Davidson’s Tracks, Cheryl Strayed's Wild, and Blair Braverman’s Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube.
Hi Courtney - I'm a new subscriber, happy to be here! Hopefully it's not too late to participate.
TITLE/GENRE: Toward the Light: A Year in Paris / Memoir
DESCRIPTION: TOWARD THE LIGHT: A YEAR IN PARIS tells the story of a recent college graduate who boards a plane for a year-long adventure in Paris, hoping to improve her French while nannying. Two months after her arrival a stranger sexually assaults her after a run in a park. Isolated and alone in a foreign country in the early 1990s--before cell phones and email--but unwilling to let rape deter her, she chooses to stay in France and begin again, seeking healing and transforming herself in the process. The book takes place over the course of one year in Paris, and focuses on an essential, often-overlooked question, “How does healing begin?” The initial journey inward is often neglected in a quest for justice or a desire to push past the trauma as quickly as possible; yet, it is the essential foundation for true healing. The book has a spiritual component to it, as the narrator grapples with profound questions of faith. The narrator offers insight and perspective on her experience of trauma and the beginnings of recovery with a depth of understanding that her twentysomething self did not and could not have had.
LOGLINE: A recent college graduate sets off on a year-long adventure in Paris, nannying for a French family. Two months after her arrival, she is plunged into darkness when a stranger sexually assaults her. Isolated and alone in a foreign country in the early 1990s, she chooses to stay in France and begin again, seeking healing and transforming herself in the process.
Hi Courtney & everyone diving in. Here is mine, if it is not too late to participate.
TITLE/GENRE: My Bread Panics/Narrative nonfiction
DESCRIPTION: Doubts about bread seem modern but as the staple food of American life, bread has been the steady object of social concern. Loaf by loaf, crumb by crumb, bread carries nutrition and status, and the lack of these virtues, too. Nineteenth century reformers focused on homemade whole wheat bread as a key to dietary and spiritual health, and as bread industrialized, the emerging industry saw women who baked at home as their prime competition. Who should make our daily bread, and what it should contain is a constant question, one that the sourdough and bread baking craze of the early pandemic brought into kitchens and minds. I invite readers to explore their lingering questions as I interrogate this emblem of love and community care. I quiz bread from flour to bakery, addressing concerns about its nutritional soundness, and the emotions and labor conditions wrapped up in its production.
LOGLINE: Written with the urgency and intimacy of Lisa Donovan's "Our Lady of Perpetual Hunger", this coming of age in food is a cross between the revelations of Tracie McMillan's "The American Way of Eating" and the cultural explorations of Aaron Bobrow-Strain’s "White Bread."
Oh thank you so much. What a boost to my confidence, and I can't wait to read your next novel. I'm crossing fingers one lovely agent agrees with your assessment of this story!
Reading these was so helpful. Thank you, Courtney, and thank you to everyone who took a leap of faith here!
Hi Courtney. I've enjoyed reading everyone's fantastic work, as well as your feedback. Thanks for creating this creative community. Here's my logline.
TITLE/GENRE: Invasive Species/ Literary-Upmarket Comedy
DESCRIPTION: Glenda Glenn never planned to become a vigilante gardener. But when a neighbor’s construction threatens her homegrown nature preserve, she’s forced into action. Like a shadowy Johnny Appleseed, she smuggles native plants across property lines, sabotages exotics, reroutes rainwater, and takes charge of the local wildlife. But conflict is in the forecast.
LOGLINE: Set in a tony east coast suburb, Invasive Species is a comic novel about a woman so troubled by a changing world that she sneaks into neighbors’ yards to climate-proof them, guerilla-style.
GENRE: Nonfiction, personal development
TITLE: The In-Between Times: Twenty Weird and Wonderful Experiments to Break-Up with Do-It-All-ism & Fully Embrace the Lovely Life Hidden in the Cracks of Your Days
(yes this title is probably too long... haha!)
Project description:
Each chapter in the book is a description of 20 experiments I've done during the in-between times of my life (driving down the highway, at the grocery store, waiting for a staff meeting to get started, etc.) in an attempt to unhook from perfectionist, toxic-productivity mindsets, and uncover more delight, awe, love, ease and yesss! (my D.A.L.E.Y. 5) in the in-between times of my life.
Logline:
This is a book for moms of school-aged kids (or just women?) who are ready to unhook from all-or-nothing, toxic-productivity mindsets through a series of playful experiments that uncover the delight, awe, love, ease and yesss! available to all of us in the in-between times of life.
TITLE/GENRE: THE RELUCTANT WINE DETECTIVE (Mystery / Thriller)
DESCRIPTION: Eugenia Clairvin, an unassuming wine phenom, with a perfect olfactory memory, doesn't recognize her unique talent. She's overwhelmed by her mother's suicide, her father's illness, and the loss of the family vineyard. But things are looking up, fate has taken an unexpected turn and brought her a whirlwind romance and a new fiancé who is a wine researcher in France. When he vanishes and she suddenly receives a cryptic letter bearing an enigmatic scent from him, she goes to France, and with her fiancé's sister, discovers he disappeared with a rare wine that will change humanity forever. To unravel his fate and decipher the truth behind a deadly web of deceit, she must first recognize the truth about herself.
LOGLINE: An unassuming wine phenom with a perfect olfactory memory, searching for her missing fiancé, uncovers a miracle wine, a web of deadly deceit, and the truth about herself.
X MEETS Y: The Queen's Gambit and Lessons in Chemistry meet Dan Brown in the world of wine.
Hi Courtney - I hope it's not too late to participate, I see you're responding to folks now! I just subscribed because I've been avoiding this challenge - thanks for prompting me to do it, and thanks in advance for your feedback!
Title: INDELICATE
Genre: Literary fiction
Description: The Junction Hotel is already on shaky ground when it’s overcome with a heat wave so powerful it threatens business and causes monstrous scorpions to infest its prized pool. Pablo, the pool attendant, is tasked with removing them, but he’s a nature-loving vegan opposed to violence of any sort. When Pablo accidentally offends an influential guest, the fate of the hotel is put at stake. Meanwhile, a journalist is arriving any minute to interview one of the hotel’s residents, a reclusive artist grappling with his first taste of fame during a creative dry spell, and put the hotel under even more scrutiny. After the hotel owner is injured and an unexpected, unwelcome guest arrives, the residents must band together under the leadership of the long-time hotel housekeeper to save the hotel.
Logline: The residents of a West Texas hotel are shaken by an unprecedented heat wave and an unexpected visitor.
XY formula: Grand Budapest Hotel, but in West Texas.
TITLE/GENRE: GROWING UP EVANGELICAL, CHINESE, AND DEPRESSED (memoir)
DESCRIPTION: The memoir tells the story of Jane, the daughter of Chinese immigrant and evangelical—almost fundamentalist—Christian parents, growing up in the 1980s and 90s in Orange County, California. She struggles with her father’s bipolar disorder as well as her own developing depression and anxiety. As Jane moves through romantic/sexual relationships, earning her PhD in English, and becoming a professor, she risks losing family and religion as she fights for her own independent identity and path.
LOGLINE: A Chinese American woman raised evangelical Christian wrestles with growing up with an immigrant father with bipolar disorder in order to pursue her own healing from depression and anxiety.
X MEETS Y: Educated meets The Collected Schizophrenias
Thank you, Courtney!
TITLE/GENRE: MR. SCHEHERAZADE — romantic comedy (screenplay)
DESCRIPTION: Paul Falconer, a middle-aged novelist, has lost touch with his readership and the world around him. He misses the old publishing world, the old Manhattan, the old literary lions. When Paul learns that his long-time publisher might cancel his book deal, he feels almost relieved. But when Paul discovers that Mary, his editor and first reader — also, his ex-wife — is romantically serious with a mysterious someone, the author wants to win her back. And how better than to write something new? He will show Mary that he can still enchant her. But, as Paul gets underway, a minor character takes narrative control. Struggling to write his novel, Paul wonders who is creating whom?
LOGLINE: An out-of-touch novelist tries to win back his ex-wife with a new book, but a minor character has other ideas.
TAGLINE: Beneath every Pygmalion lies a Frankenstein.
X MEETS Y: “My Fair Lady” meets “Frankenstein” with “His Girl Friday” as the framing device. Or, because there will be a lot of tug-of-war with POV - “If Christopher Nolan and Nora Ephron had a love child, it might be this romantic comedy.”
[Title/Genre] A LEAVE OF ABSENCE (Book Club/Upmarket Fiction)
[Description] Set in the glory days of 2013 Silicon Valley, A LEAVE OF ABSENCE follows an ambitious millennial woman named Maggie, a rising-star journalist. After her ultra-successful father jumps off the Golden Gate Bridge, Maggie and her mother are unexpectedly left penniless. She joins a promising early-stage startup in San Francisco, hoping for a quick path back to riches, and falls for its charismatic founder, spiraling her life into a wildly unexpected direction that forces her to reckon with both her sanity and the world she's always felt she was destined to inhabit.
[Logline] It’s like Fleishman is in Trouble if Rachel Fleishman had undiagnosed bipolar disorder and worked at a hot startup in 2013 Silicon Valley
[XYZ]: Fleishman is Trouble meets Uncanny Valley meets Sorrow and Bliss (although, note; the novel also deals with postpartum psychosis, so I’m not sure whether a novel of that ilk—like The Upstairs House or Nightbitch would be better here?)